21 February 2013

At Pontarfynach are three famous bridges piled atop each other, spanning a tributary of the Rheidol - the Mynach. The lowest bridge is of the twelfth, or possibly even the eleventh, century; and was supposedly built by the Devil, the ravine through which the Mynach passes being too challenging for human builders - the river drops 300 feet in five leaps.

The folk tale has it that Old Nick bargained with an old woman, who needed to get to the other side of the river to recover a cow, that he would build the impossible bridge overnight in exchange for the soul of the first living creature to cross it in the morning. The bridge was built but Beelzebub was outsmarted: the old woman threw a loaf across the river and her dog ran after it, crossing the bridge. The dog presumably became a Hound of Hell.

The middle bridge, of stone, as is the lowest, was built in 1753. The uppermost bridge, which today carries the road over the river, is of iron, built 1901. The footbridge pictured is of 1867. Near one end of the road bridge stands an Automobile Association box. There were once over 1,000 of these on Britain's trunk roads, the first introduced in 1911, in Ashtead, Surrey.

Initially accommodating AA patrolmen, the boxes were later provided with a 'phone, such that an AA member, armed with his or her box key, could call for assistance and shelter from the weather. The boxes were kitted out with maps and a fire extinguisher, and were lit at night. They were phased out through the 1970s and 1980s. The AA closed its private 'phone network in 2002, and no more than a dozen boxes are understood to remain outwith museums.

18 February 2013

Digital cameras are now ubiquitous, and everyone with a mobile 'phone is a David Bailey. Against every trend however there is a counter-trend, and that against digital is known as lomography. This is both a community, centred around the Lomographic Society International, founded in Vienna in 1992; and a brand name, of Lomographische AG, distributor outside of the old USSR of the originally cheap Lomo LC-A camera made in St Petersburg from the early 1980s.

Lomography has become fashionable and 'lomo' cameras thus expensive: the all-plastic Diana of the early 1960s, available in 120mm and 35mm film formats, was made by the Great Wall Plastic Factory, Kowloon, and often given away as a novelty; the modern copy costs £80 new. Plastic cameras can though still be found cheap, as in the case of this unbranded 35mm made in the Republic of China (Taiwan). No batteries, no reflex mirror, a fixed-focus plastic lens, f-stops of only 6, 8, 11 and 16, and a single shutter speed.

This Week's Read

Irritating Saints

"The pleasantest people in the world were the selfish ones who were also kindly, so that in the middle of their selfishness they thought of you and did something for you. Unselfish people who were always eager to do something for you were so irritating ..." Hugh Walpole, 1931, Judith Paris.